‘Technology expands lotto operations’

The General Manager of the Lagos State Lottery Board, Lanre Gbajabiamila has said that with the provision of emerging technology facilities that allows playing lotto through smart devices, the customer base of lotto companies and their agents would be enlarged.

Speaking in Lagos at the public presentation of the Shop level mobile app and web application by Golden Chance Lotto, Gbajabiamila, who commended the company for investing in innovative ideas, noted that when the regulatory body initially asked that the lotto operators must go online in its operations, they initially kicked against, but after tasting it and seeing the benefits, they are now coming with innovative ways to play lotto online, which no doubt gave birth to the shop level mobile app and the web application.

Explaining that Lagos State Government and the lottery board will always support innovative ideas that will enhance playing of lotto, he urged Golden Chance Lotto not to relent on coming with new ideas on how to make the playing of lotto more encompassing. He also noted that with the new ideas, there would be challenges of ensuring that minors are not allowed to come on board with his board would be looking into the days ahead.    On his part, the Chairman of Golden Chance Lotto, Idowu Obasa said that the two platforms launched by his company are a result of years of research and with the application; stakers can now play lotto on smartphones, Laptops, tablets and personal computers through its website. “This our web application, which is one of the things we are celebrating today, it is possible to say that this is available to about 3 or 4 lotto companies today.” He however said that what is not available in other companies is the exclusive to play online in its agents’ shops.

“We have developed an app, which can be downloaded by our agents, which will now allow all their customers to play on-line thereby widening the scope of possibilities for the staker in a country like Nigeria where access means having several options.”

Explaining reason for the innovation, he said, “We realised that in spite of the marvel of the POS, there are, out there, millions of potential customers who still lacked access to play for various reasons, some because they want privacy, some others because they want to play with their own device.”

Providing some historical background, Obasa said that not so long ago, lotto was being played in Nigeria manually with cashers and validators spending hours in processing the data, which was so laborious, time consuming and absolutely unreliable and it seems the lotto companies have no choice.

“However with Lagos State Blazing the trail, it became compulsory for operators to go online. In the past seven years or so, most lotto companies, except the pirate impostors have captured data through the POS machines and relayed them, not by hand but by internet to servers which silently and swiftly process the data.”

He noted that what takes about 200 abled-men and women about eight hours checking, now takes the servers less than ten minutes to achieve with unassailable accuracy. Meanwhile, at the event, the top five selling agents were rewarded with a trip to Dubai.